Exercise BINGO

Our library uses the Collaborative Summer Reading Program every year, last year's theme was Be a Hero Read. We partnered with the Mayo Clinic Health Systems and our Friends of the Library to offer an exercise BINGO sheet for kids to finish and earn raffle tickets for an end of the summer prize drawing, a hacky sack when they picked up the form and a free water bottle upon completion.

We had two new Story Walks set up in our town, one at a local park and one at our local school's nature walk. We included the Story Walk on the BINGO sheet as a way to promote it's existence.

This side program (with hardly any staff work) was a great success for our small library (Res Pop 3500). We had 126 kids pick up the BINGO sheets (tracked by the number of balls we gave away) and 44 kids returned them completed. AND this summer's theme is On Your Mark, Get Set, Read! which makes this BINGO sheet extra awesome because we will be partnering with the Mayo Clinic Health Systems and holding it again.

Summer Reading is Over!

Six weeks of summer reading has me BURNT OUT! Here's the run down:

Rubber Ducky Club (Birth through 2 years)

• Monthly literacy activities (this is a VERY passive program). The first month they get a duck, and the second month they get a free book.

Kid's Program (3 years through 5th grade)

• Opening day carnival (First Monday).
• Weekly Reading logs (kids have to read 15 minutes on four different days) with prizes and raffle tickets. Week six prize is a free book.
• Weekly in house activity (for raffle ticket).
• Weekly coloring sheet (for raffle ticket).
• Closing day party (Last Friday)

BRAND NEW Tween2Teen Program (6th through 12th grades)

• They get one log with 8 hours broken up into 15 minute chunks. After they read 8 hours they get a free book to keep, 5 raffle tickets and a bonus sheet with 5 more hours broken up into 15 minute chunks (for extra raffle tickets). 
• They can also write a "Book Blurb" for bonus raffle tickets which we hang on the shelves near the books' shelf locations (we had 63 on our shelves!).
• We had a 'Til Midnight Movie Marathon for them on the last Friday.

Mondays: Toddler Storytime, then Movie Matinee

Tuesdays: Preschool Storytime

Wednesdays: School Age Explorers

Thursdays: Junior Gardeners

The great news is that numbers have excelled expectations tremendously. The bad news is that they love it so much they want more weeks next year. I'm not sure I could handle one more week!

Mud Party!

Story

Mud Puddle- Robert Munsch. I haven't done a Munsch at storytime, and was worried about the lengthy text. It was rhythmic and repeating which kept the kids involved and they really seemed to enjoy it.

Activity

This is the Way we Wash our. . .

I bought some cheapo wash clothes at Walmart (I used them for baby storytimes too) and had my daughters help tie dye them. We sang this is the way we wash our arms, wash our arms, wash our arms. . .etc. Then I had the kids shout out the parts they wanted to wash. .  oddly enough there was no butt washing.

Story

Harry the Dirty Dog – Gene Zion. Oh that Harry, the kids were a little worried that all would be lost. 

Story

Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud  Lynn Plourde. This wasn't the greatest and the kids weren't understanding that rud meant road. . . 

Song

We did my version of Old MacDonald that goes The Pigs on the Farm (Tune of Wheels on the Bus) with flannel pieces. More singing animals noises and less E-I-E-I-O-ing. This would make a great book.

Story

Ten Dirty Pigs Carol Roth. When read one way the pigs are dirty and get clean. Half way through you close the book flip it backwards and read it and the pigs are clean and they get dirty. This book could go on forever. I asked the kids if they wanted to read about the dirty pigs again and it was a negative.

Activity

Making Mud: I had four disposable roasting pans. I filled them with dirt, let the kids add water with styrofoam cups until they had the mud how they wanted it and they dug into the mud! I added some spoons for stirring and some bugs for color. The parents LOVED this it was a great sensory experience (and it wasn't at their house). I had warned them ahead of time that it was going to be messy. . . and I delivered! 

I Dig Stealth Activities

All of my weekly summer activities have kids writing, a sometimes overlooked literacy activity.

Week One: I Spy Bottle
Fill in the blanks for numbers, colors and other information from the I Spy Bottle.

Week Two: Gnome Hunt
I used this activity to reinforce the different areas of the library. The kids had to look for 12 different colored gnomes then write down where they found them in the library. I labeled each of the gnomes with the area that I had hid them in so smaller kids could copy the words.

 Week Three: Treasure Hunt I used a glue gun to attach pirate related pictures and letters to gold coins. I used the pictures to make a coded message for the kids to figure out. I shredded some brown paper for sand and put it in a baby pool and put the coins in the "sand". The older kids thought that this activity was TOO easy, but I couldn't make it too hard for the smaller kids. Maybe next time there will have to be two different messages.

School Age Explorers: Mud & Worms

One hour? Four Stations...

I knew had a hunch that my station idea wasn't going to work, but really wanted to try it to keep kids (and me) on track for time. Why did I know it wasn't going to work? Kids play, learn and explore at different paces. This system would require them to stick together for about ten minutes and rotate to a new station at the same time. The system actually wasn't that bad and it did help to get all the kids to same tables at the same time, eventually!

At the beginning of the program I read Diary of a Worm by Doreen Conin.I was able to muster a few laughs and giggles, so will be reading again at our next School Age Explorers program. It also allowed time for stragglers to trickle in before I started explaining the different stations.

Station One: Mud Playdough (Non cook playdough recipe with cocoa for color)

Station Two: Sensory Worms (aka cooked spaghetti - I am sorry Head Start)

Station Three: Worm Painting (with cooked spaghetti- sorry again Head Start)

Final Station: Dirt cups with pudding, crushed oreos and gummy worms.

Oh how I wish I had taken a final picture at the end. It took over an hour to clean up the room and I was covered in flour from the playdough, but it was SUPER fun! The kids had a blast! The vaccuum got up most of the cooked pasta. I have been trained (by Head Start) that it is evil to waste food in front of kids who are starving. I'm sure there is something else I could have used like yarn for the worm paintings (now that I think about it). Not sure how I could have got around the sensory tubs unless I used REAL worms, which would then be cruelty to animals. . . so I just bit it and used the cooked pasta.

The station cards did work, but I messed up the order of the stations on the cards and this was VERY TRAUMATIC for some of the kids. I wanted them to rotate from librarian led activity to self-guided activity and had mislabeled the stations to make that impossible to happen. So I didn't go in the order of the cards and that caused a lot of chaos! I will diligently plan where I put the Station posters next time to allow the flow to follow the cards! So I do plan on using my stations and station cards next time now that I am more prepared for how they will work!

Supplies (for 25 kids)
Art Projects: 2 boxes of cooked spaghetti, paint & paper
Playdough: flour, vegetable oil, cocoa, & salt
Dirt cups: 8 boxes of chocolate pudding mix, 1/2 gallon of milk, 2 small conainers of oreos and 2 bags of gummy worms.

Kick Off Carnival

Standing outside, the warm sun on my face, a soft breeze brushing my hair against my neck...

 I AM SO GLAD I CHOSE CARNIVAL INSTEAD OF OVERPRICED PERFORMER!!!

1. Bounce House ($175)

2. Face Painter VOLUNTEERS!

3. Snacks: Donated Hot Dogs ($10 for Napkins & Condiments)
 & Cotton Candy ($80)

4. Game One: Spell READ by dropping ping pong balls into these buckets ($8)
& small found in the back room prizes (free).

5. Game Two: Squirt the eye balls off the saw horse (found on Pinterest here & here)
($2 for squirt guns) & READ tattoos for shooting water guns ($5.25)

Each kid who came got 5 tickets, and each activity/snack "cost" 1 ticket. Last year for the magician we had 66 kids and 18 adults. This year for the carnival we had 55 kids and 16 adults. The kids number was a little low, but I bet if we do this every year the numbers will go up!

My favorite part was telling the kids that this was "FREE!" The grandma walking by telling her granddaughter that it was too expensive? I got to tell her, "it's free!" "But how much is the cotton candy?" ME: "FREE!!!!" They came to the carnival! One kid asked me, "so how much money did you make?"  Me: "It was FREE, how much money do YOU think I made?" followed up with my smirky little grin.

All of that fun for less than $300! It wasn't a ton of extra work, really. Clean up wasn't too bad either. Thank goodness for the dad who came to pick up his teen volunteer and helped us pick up that big pig of a bouncy house and put it into a truck!

Notes for next year?
1. Skip the hot dogs (worm dogs). They were a cute idea, but no one really wanted one, kids were more interested in the cotton candy!
2. Paint the board on the squirt gun game! My husband made that for me ten minutes before I left for work the day of the carnival (thanks hun)!
3. There were just enough events to keep kids here for a short time, but not too long!
4. Timing? Pre-registration (started 2 weeks before the carnival) confuses parents (and myself). Should we skip that next year?
5. I know that Kim is dreaming about sitting in a dunk tank next year!

Junior Gardeners

One of our library board members is a Master Gardener and she asked me in February if I wanted to do a program during Summer Reading with her. She applied for a grant, which we were awarded ($200)! We got together twice to plan out our major themes to use over the course of six weeks, then she narrowed it down further into more specific activities. I made the permission slips, promoted it at my SRP talks, and developed journals to incorporate writing into our program.

Thursday was our first day, and we planted our garden. We had 21 kids sign up (this is the only registration required program for our SRP). 14 of them showed up to help with the planting today! We met at the library, went over some basic rules then walked about six blocks to the Community Garden where we planted seeds and set plants. It was fun to see members of the community (who are not me) interact with kids.

It was a great program, the kids got dirty, an  older member of the community walked over to us and chatted with us about some of her gardening experiences. We walked back to the library and wrote journal entries and that was it for the day. It was a great program and I highly recommend it to anyone who can find a way to make it work.

My daycare field trip experience was SUPER helpful with this program. Making sure permission slips were filled out, we had a phone, a camera and most importantly the emergency contact information on hand with us. I also feel like I wasn't as nervous as I could have been walking 14 kids for six blocks and crossing roads. I can't wait until our next time. PS the cost of this program for the library? Free :)

Dig Into Exhaustion

Yeah, I said it, but I love it sooo much!!

This past month I have been frantically planning EVERYTHING! Reading logs, decorations, flyers, school visits, sponsors, programs, press releases and more.

I am so excited that we are offering four programs this year!

Each year we have run a kids' program. This year we are using the Dig Into Reading theme! I mixed things up by adding another week, but more importantly I moved up the program so it starts in June rather than mid-July. I'm hopeful that this will increase numbers and early results indicate that we have over 70 kids registered in the first TWO DAYS!!! Last year we had 151 total.

You know you live in Wisconsin when the two year olds know that this is a badger!
Recycled brown packing paper!

Raffle tickets go here please! 
I've been saving brown paper for months.

The loft is looking tropical (at least we can dream of warm sunny days under there!)
More brown paper for the vines.

Curling Ribbon makes everything prettier (and some more brown paper).

Last year we added the Rubber Ducky Club (thank you Marge Loch-Wouters!). We had about 20 participants, but 20 littles getting early literacy exposure is better than none, so we are running it again.

I added a Tween2Teen Program with no gimmicky theme (although one kid thought it was for sex education. . . yeah probably not going there this summer!) Kids read 8 hours, they get a free book & raffle tickets with chances to earn extra raffle tickets by volunteering, reading extra time and filling out a short book review to post in the library. I'm excited about the numbers this early into the registration!

We, and by we I mean Kim, sets up an adult raffle in which adults can fill out a ticket with the name of the book they read for prizes.

(Oh, yeah. . more brown paper vines)

Everything is set up and ready to go, our first program is this afternoon! 

Just When You Thought it was Safe to Go Into the Library

This last week has felt more like working at the daycare than at the library, not because I feel like I am watching everyone's kids for them, but because I am dreaming of sitting at my desk for more than twenty minutes at a pop. Since last Wednesday, I've had my school age Crafternoon, a day of last minute summer decorating and running copies for the 200 kids for library visits on Friday, (thankfully the weekend off) a funeral and four hours of work at the circulation desk and a Friends meeting yesterday, 200 more kids through the library today and another twenty kids for an hour and a half of programming after the tours! I'm exhausted and haven't craved wine this badly since my daycare days. Summer Reading Program is A LOT of work for youth services people! Vent over...

Kudos to all you fabulous people conducting your own SRPs! Also, kudos to all of you daycare people who don't even have a desk to escape to!

To Book or not to Book. . .hmmmmm

Summer Reading Program (small grimace)

I started my Summer Reading Program planning calendar of hell fun today. Many librarians in my area are booking their performers for the summer and I find myself completely balking at the thought of paying someone $400 (yeah that's right) just to entertain kids at my library for an  hour. Do you know how much I make an hour to entertain the little tykes? . . . . best keep that information to myself, but I'll have you know it is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than $400.

Needless to say, I'm thinking of going a different route and maybe not having a performer at all this year. This is my second year at the library and my director is super awesome at letting me do things my way, so I may have to shake up the natural order of the universe. $400? Yeah, I'm still stuck on that one too.

Professor Marvel rocked it last summer! But, I am not looking forward to cramming over 80 people into a 20 x 20 room that is about 95 degrees this year - the $400 (had to) performer took up about one third of the space so you can just imagine the stinky sardines coming out of that room after an hour and a half!

I am picturing a kick off carnival that is drop in, OUTSIDE under tents with fresh air and room for all. It could even last for two to three hours so parents would be able to drop in and spend time with their children participating in some literacy/ science-y type activities after they register for the summer reading program of course!

I can't believe how fast summer is approaching! I'll have to decide quickly before all the good performers are all booked up. It would be too bad if I waited too long and no one was available.